Heir of Synthesis: The World Mage

Priam and Arvid were already a considerable distance away from the two armies when they stopped.

More than ten meters away, Mo Lan also stopped, frozen in place the moment Arvid’s thunderous spear was pointed at her.

Arvid’s gaze burned with fury, but his sharp eyes noticed an unusual hesitation on the girl’s face. There was none of the usual arrogance of the Chosen of the Calamity Beasts, only an uncomfortable shadow of uncertainty.

Priam let out a cold sigh. ”Just say it. What do you want?”

Mo Lan turned her face toward Priam, her voice trembling slightly. ”I came to negotiate. Officially... and to ask for help.”

Hearing that, Arvid’s expression sank into pure contempt. ”Help? Go to hell!”

Mo Lan swallowed hard. Her features twisted, but her reaction wasn’t anger or wounded pride; it was uneasiness, as if she felt guilty.

”Speak directly. Our time is short,” Priam interrupted, his voice filled with calm gravity. ”What do you need, and why do you think we should listen to you?”

Mo Lan took a deep breath, trying to reorganize her thoughts.

”Over the past few days, invaders from another world have attacked and destroyed countless bases belonging to my great race. According to the laws of the ancestors left to the descendants of this realm, when outsiders attack, we are supposed to set aside our differences and...”

”You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Arvid interrupted, his voice loud and merciless. ”Why the hell would the Impure Beasts ever agree to ally themselves with murderous monsters like you?! Less than a year ago, an entire tribe with hundreds of thousands of our brothers was massacred and refined in cold blood by you!”

With every word Arvid spat out, Mo Lan lowered her head further, unable to face either of them. The silence that followed was deathly.

Priam narrowed his eyes as he read the girl’s posture. ”The elders of your race didn’t send you here, did they?”

Mo Lan slowly raised her eyes. When she looked at Priam, she found a calm, analytical gaze that seemed to see straight through her soul.

”...They said it would be pointless. But I wanted to come on my own. It’s just that... I recently discovered that it was impossible to repair my ancestral sword through normal means. To restore its power... they would have to repeat exactly the same massacre...”

She faltered halfway through the sentence, her throat dry as she swallowed hard and stared at the ground again.

Seeing the raw pain on the girl’s face, Arvid let out a heavy sigh and slightly lowered the tip of his spear, though his gaze remained icy.

”So you finally found out the truth, huh?” Arvid said, his voice deep and bitter. ”And you think we care about your ignorance? You were born, raised, and enjoyed every privilege and every ounce of power the Calamity Beasts gave you... All of it built upon the blood of the Impure Beasts and even the Heavenly Beasts.”

Arvid paused, and she slowly raised her gaze as he fixed his eyes on hers.

”The leaders of my people and I already suspected that you knew nothing. Those damned old bastards of your race are masters of manipulation. They knew you were less cruel by nature and that you would hesitate if you knew the truth. But listen carefully...”

Arvid took a step forward, and his aura made the dust around them tremble.

”Ignorance is not the same as innocence. You may have been kept in the dark, but the signs were right in front of you the entire time! You weren’t just some nobody; you were the Chosen of the Calamity Beasts! Every action you take carries the weight of thousands of lives. The fact that you never questioned anything, never investigated the origin of your resources when you felt something was wrong... that makes you an accomplice. You are NOT innocent. And the blood of my brothers is also on your hands.”

Mo Lan’s face turned pale. She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails nearly pierced her skin, but she didn’t utter a single word.

In the middle of that devastated plain, the silence between the three became suffocating.

It was Priam who finally broke the tension.

”Explain this properly. What exactly did the invaders do? This is of vital interest, including to the Impure Beasts.”

Mo Lan raised her eyes, her voice trembling. ”There were very few reports from survivors. They said the invaders used some kind of sinister magic, something that invaded the bodies and souls of several people at once, incapacitating them to the point where they couldn’t even fight. Then... all rationality simply vanished from my people. They became mindless slaves, emitting an evil aura and attacking their own former allies. It was a domino effect: it started with a few, and within a matter of hours, an entire horde had been transformed.”

Priam’s eyes suddenly contracted.

’Loss of intelligence? An evil aura?’

That wasn’t an ordinary technique... it sounded exactly like the classic description of the Sorcerers’ Corrupted Beasts!

Priam remembered hearing about this before the mission: the Sorcerers weren’t supposed to be capable of creating Corrupted Beasts in external worlds, because the biological structure and elemental energy of creatures from other worlds were incompatible with the infection.

If it were easy to infect the local wildlife, any mission involving Sorcerers would turn into a one-sided massacre for ordinary Mages, since the Sorcerers could raise entire armies overnight.

No one expected an army of Corrupted Beasts on this mission. So much so that the Central Elder simply told them to kill the Sorcerers, as if it were just a normal thing.

But the reality right in front of him was something else entirely.

’After countless attempts and failures over generations on this very same mission... those bastards must have changed their plans and sent people focused on studying the beasts of this world. And now, they finally succeeded...’

Priam swallowed hard, feeling an icy chill run down his spine.

The scale of the threat had changed drastically. The Sorcerers were no longer just dangerous rivals—they had become an absolute extinction-level threat.

When the passage to the Central Region opened, all the Mages would be ambushed by an overwhelming legion of Corrupted Beasts from all three major types. The Sorcerers would certainly do everything they could to keep this hidden from the Mages until the very end.

Then, without warning, the Mages would be surrounded and slaughtered all at once.

Priam clenched his fists.

If he hadn’t disguised himself and traveled alongside the Impure Beasts, he might never have discovered this—or he might have found out far too late.

He looked at Mo Lan and felt a genuine flicker of gratitude.

Priam knew he couldn’t erase generations of resentment between the two races, and the Calamity Beasts certainly deserved every ounce of hatred they received. However, when he looked at Mo Lan’s devastated expression, he couldn’t help but remember Mirra.

If Priam hadn’t rescued Mirra from the clutches of the Primordial Chaos Beasts, she would have grown up among her own kind, becoming exactly like Mo Lan: a manipulated and arrogant child, living at the top of a pyramid built upon the sacrifice and suffering of thousands of innocents.

Mo Lan wasn’t inherently evil. The guilt written all over her face proved that she couldn’t stomach the monstrosity she had discovered.

Even knowing that Arvid hated her and that the chances of any dialogue were almost nonexistent, she had come alone to warn them, driven by a desperate, blind need for redemption. She wanted, at the very least, to tell them about the new danger brought by the invaders.

”All right,” Priam said, turning to Arvid beside him. ”Kid, can you swallow that hatred of yours for the greater good? The invaders are incomparably more dangerous than the Calamity Beasts. After all, they’re the ones who destroyed this world in the first place.”

Arvid’s gaze wavered under the weight of the logic, but his teeth were still grinding. ”B-But...!”

”I’m not asking you to forgive anyone,” Priam cut in firmly, turning back to the girl. ”Girl, can you guarantee that your race will maintain a temporary truce? I want you to guarantee, with your own life, that as long as the invaders are in this realm, you won’t attack the Impure Beasts.”

Mo Lan trembled, but soon raised her head and nodded fervently. ”I...”

She froze halfway through the sentence, looking up at the Heavenly Ship in the sky and remembering the treasures. It was naive to promise that her people wouldn’t fight over the resources. There was no way she could stop them.

Priam let out a disdainful snort. ”Don’t worry about that. I’ll go up that monstrosity and loot everything inside. There are certainly more treasures up there than in this ridiculous dispute on the plain. I’ll split the spoils fairly between both sides to make sure you don’t kill each other.”

”That’s ridiculous!” Arvid immediately protested. ”The second you hand over the treasures, they’ll attack us to steal our share!”

”A valid point,” Priam calmly agreed. ”Girl, if you truly regret what your people did, and want to prove your good faith for a truce... hand over your Ancestral Sword to me. The power of that weapon came from the massacre of the Impure Beasts. Handing it over is the bare minimum they deserve as a guarantee.”

Upon hearing Priam’s demand, Arvid slowly turned his neck, staring at Mo Lan.

Priam’s logic was flawless: without the Ancestral Sword, the balance of power between the two great races would become practically even. Even if the Calamity Beasts tried to betray them later, they would no longer have the overwhelming advantage they had before.

Arvid let out a mocking smile. ’As if this spoiled girl would hand over her ultimate power...’

”Fine.”

Mo Lan’s answer came without a second of hesitation.

With a calm movement, she extended her bone sword—still with part of the blade broken.

Far away, the army of Calamity Beasts watched the three of them from a distance, unable to hear anything. They were all positioned and ready to fight in case Mo Lan was attacked by the two.

But suddenly... they saw Mo Lan extend her Ancestral Sword...

Then she threw it forward!

A cry of pure desperation and mental breakdown echoed among those beasts.

”SHE’S COMPLETELY LOST HER MIND?!”